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The Rabbi Aryeh Wolbe Podcast Collection is the one-stop shop for the Torah inspiration shared by Rabbi Aryeh Wolbe in one simple feed. The Jewish Inspiration Podcast, Parsha Review Podcast, Thinking Talmudist Podcast, Living Jewishly Podcast and Unboxing Judaism Podcast all in one convenient place. Enjoy!
You're listening to Rabbi Aryeh Wolbe of TORCH in Houston, Texas. This is the Jewish Inspiration Podcast.
And now my dear friends, we resume with day number 172 on the top of page 907 in the Treasure for Life edition of the Orchos Tzadikim, The Ways of the Righteous. We are in middle of the Gate of Repentance. HaMechal Oles HaShem, someone who desecrates God's name. Chiru HaShemu Avon Godo Me'od, desecrating the name of HaShem is a very, very grave sin. What is a desecration of God's name?
This is a Talmud in Yuma. He says, me, I am such an example of a desecration of God's name. He says, I went to the butcher and I bought meat and I didn't pay him right away. I didn't pay him right away. That is a desecration of God's name. He says, so what happens? People say, if that's the rabbi, he doesn't need to pay right away. So I don't either. And then people become lax in their seriousness about paying their bills.
And he says, I, as an example, I'm supposed to be an example for the good. And I was an example for the bad. And then people say, because he was, if it's good enough for the rabbi, it's good enough for me. And that's not the proper way to live life. All right. He says, I'm a desecration of God's name. Why? He says, I am such as I have walked four Amos without Torah and without Tefillin.
And now the world is learning to be lax that they don't need to learn and they don't need, and they can be less observant because of me, says Rabbi Yochanan. And now there's another example here. He says, if someone is being spoken about in public, that, yay, he's very lax in certain areas. And then people say, like, if he's lax, I can be lax. Again, it's the same idea that now you're opening yourself up to other people learning to transgress from your ways. The Talmud continues,
It is better for a person to sin privately than to sin publicly. It's that people do not learn from their mistaken ways. So if a person makes a mistake, okay, God forbid, if someone was tempted with eating something non-kosher. So there's one thing, okay, I eat privately in my own home. I eat, if someone were to, heaven forbid, eat non-kosher in their own home, that's one thing. But to go out in the public and to eat it, now you're declaring with the world, to the
world that I don't need to eat kosher. You don't either need to eat kosher. Particularly, sadly, there are people who call themselves rabbis that frequent the non-kosher restaurants. That's a desecration of God's name because now people see them like, oh, if it's good enough for the rabbi, it's good enough for me. And that is a complete desecration of God's name. Obviously, someone who's Torah observant would not be found dead in a kosher restaurant. I'm saying that after I gave a two-hour class today in a non-kosher restaurant.
So there's actually a Jewish-owned restaurant, but it's not kosher, Kenny and Ziggy's. And both of the owners are dear friends. They were both participants in the class. And again, it's not an encouragement for anyone to ever eat there, okay? And Kenny will listen to this class, Ziggy will listen to this class, and he'll say, Rabbi Yeshachoach, thank you for making it clear that we're not a kosher facility. So I just want to explain what really transpires. I learned with him for already several months.
We've been learning together. And he said, why don't we learn in my restaurants? I said, it's a problem because people can't see me going into the restaurant. They're going to think, like we just learned here, that it's okay to go into the restaurant that serves non-kosher food, and it's not okay. He says, I understand, but I have a back room, which is like a kidder's room, like it's called the schmooze room, and we can be back there. And that way nobody sees you and you're back there.
I said, okay, let me look into it. I called my rabbi, as I do with all these types of questions, and my rabbi said, if you bring in, which he agreed, which is unbelievable, if you bring in food from a kosher establishment, so then, and, okay, so we can't advertise the class yet. We're not advertising it yet. Okay, but if he allows you to advertise that the food is from a kosher caterer, from a kosher restaurant, you can advertise that you're doing the class there.
So until then, we can do the class with either no food or with kosher food that we bring in, but if we want to advertise the class, then we have to share who the kosher food is being served by. So this was, it's an interesting, very interesting thing. Why? Because, so today we were there and we didn't even go in. We were in the back. It was a beautiful, beautiful day today, so we were able to sit outside in the gazebo
in the back of the schmooze room and have our magnificent class. It was absolutely beautiful. It was great learning, great conversations. It was excellent. I actually did not bring the food. We didn't have any food today. There was no food, but it's important to make a distinction. It's important to make a distinction because, you know, I'll give you an example. It's a big question that used to come up way back when. So you're traveling on the road.
You're driving out, you know, out west to Arizona, and you're traveling with your children. They need bathroom stops every 20 minutes, right? So you stop at a rest stop, and it's not a Buc-ee's. It's not a really nice, you know, for those of you who are not from Texas, you have no idea what I'm talking about, but those of you who are from Texas and know what Buc-ee's is, it's quite an experience. It's a landmark. It's a Texas landmark now, right?
Every one of them is just magnificent. So what's if you go into a place like Buc-ee's? They sell a lot of non-kosher food, right? But there are so many things that are kosher, number one. And second is you can go in and use the restroom and not buy anything. It's fine. No one is suspecting you of eating non-kosher by going into a Buc-ee's, and no one is suspecting you of going into a gas station that has a Wendy's attached to it, because there's plenty
of things that are kosher products that they sell in all of these gas stations. No one is suspecting you of walking in. So we have to understand that there's something called mares ayin, which is the perspective of other people. Someone will look, and they'll see. Now, if you have a meeting with someone in a Olive Garden restaurant, if you don't know that, that's a non-kosher restaurant, right? So Olive Garden, right? I'll meet you. Where will I meet you? It's a non-Jew business.
We'll just sit there at the Olive Garden. So that could be problematic. You walk in there with your yarmulke, and someone looks at you, and they're like, what are you doing in this trafe house, right? What are you doing here, right? That could be very problematic, because they could have the wrong conclusion. They might jump to the wrong conclusion that maybe this is a kosher place. That's why he's here. Maybe it really is kosher, and it's not. You cannot give off the wrong impression.
You got to be very, very careful, particularly if you are a person who is of rabbinic authority, where people look up to you as being a spokesman, so to speak, of the Torah. Okay. Okay. V'oma, Rabbi Eloi Yazokin said, Im ro'e odam she yitzur mizgaber alef. If a person sees that his yetzahara is overtaking him, Yeylekh l'mokim she'en makir no'so. Go to a place where nobody knows you. Ve'yilba shchormim. Wear black clothes. Ve'isatev shchormim. And wrap yourself with black clothes.
Ve'yaseh mash li bochofetz. And do what you need to do. Ve'al yechal shem sh'mayim befresyo. But do not ever desecrate God's name in public. Uperish, Rabbeinu Hanan or Rabbeinu Hananel says, explaining this, Chas v'shalom shehuto lo la'avor haver. Not that he's saying here that you should commit a sin. Ela chachamim amru keneged yetzara she'enu miz'ave, Ela el ha'isr l'malos ta'avoso. Ve'keven she'olekh u'meirochok y'lo v'shchorim. Oz li bo yishaber ve'ikona ve'imona menachet. He's not saying wrap yourself up in a dark cloak, wear black clothes,
go to a place where nobody knows you and then just sin. He's not, that's not what the Talmud says. Talmud says is that basically if you have to add so many steps by that time that you're done, you're not going to have that desire and temptation like you did with that burning passion that you wanted to do some sin. If you have to do so many steps, you can already convince yourself it's not worth it. I'm not going to do it.
Av ol'asos yisurim k'lal ve'khal lo, but definitely not to sin. Ach ma'asim halolu mishabim ro'a yetzara horo, u'monim oso milavod. So he says the black clothes, the black cloak, the running to a place where nobody knows you, all of these things, yetzara is like, well, nah, nah, I'm not going to bother this guy. He's too complicated for me. You know, it's like they ask the cops, you know, when they were rolling out the new app of Waze
and Google Maps that tell you when there's a police, you know, it tells you where there's a police trap, where there are cameras to inform the driver. So they were very, very, they were asking, the newscasters on television were asking, so what does this do for your line of work where your job is to give people speeding tickets? They said there's plenty of fish in the sea. Don't worry about it. There'll be plenty of people who don't use the app
and it's fine, we'll catch those people. The yetzara has more customers than someone who's going to start making things complicated. Oh, I only get angry when I wear that yarmulke. Let me go run, get my yarmulke so I can be angry, right? Like by the time you're there, it's like, it's not worth it. They used to say that parents shouldn't yell at their children till they count slowly to 10. Because by the time you count to 10, you won't remember what you were going
to yell at your children at. I say, forget that. You shouldn't yell at your children anyway, ever. No need to yell at your children. Hug them more and you'll need to yell at them less. He says all of these steps that a person puts in as protective measures. I'm not going to do this or that. I'll give you an example. And many of these filters that they have on these phones so that God forbid someone shouldn't be tempted.
Someone sends you a link or someone sends you something, shouldn't see something which is inappropriate. So sometimes it's like you need someone to unlock it. Someone else has a password. By the time it's like, it's not worth it. It's just not worth it. Let me, you know, I'll just skip that link. And, you know, sometimes you're a person who's curious. What could it be? If I have to go through such a headache to get it unlocked, it's just not worth it for me.
And what we're doing is we're creating barriers from the Yetzirah trying to throw at us a trap because it's just not worth it for him. It's not worth it for the Yetzirah if it's going to be such a complicated process. And that's, Yetzirah is our evil inclination who's always trying to get us to sin. And if we create strong barriers to protect ourselves, then it's a very good thing for us. And they said, that he who does not have the power of the universe,
definitely someone who does sin and does give into his Yetzirah, someone else who sees this will say, oh, he doesn't respect God. And if that's the case, such a person can be gravely punished. For Amor by Gomorrah, Amor Rabbi Yosef, Rabbi Yosef says in the Talmud, Someone who sins privately, right, is also pushing away the presence of God. It's not, the person shouldn't think, well, me and my home, I just, I do what I do and it's nobody's business.
No, a person's basically declaring that God doesn't see what goes on in my home. God sees what goes on everywhere. And therefore a person should be very, very cautious and very, very careful. A person has to be careful because the desecration of God's name has, bears fruit. First is when you do something wrong, other people learn from you. They're like, ah, it's good enough for him. It's good enough for me. If he'll burn, at least I'll be in good company, right?
And a person has to be very, very cautious of that. And from this, a person should be very, very concerned. Okay, so someone who makes light of any single mitzvah, like, ah, kosher, it's just the rabbi tax, right? They make light of that. So now the next person might take that and say, I literally heard the rabbi say that. The rabbi said it was just the rabbi tax. So it's like the whole thing is just one, it's just a nonsense
and you don't have to take it seriously. It's not a big deal, right? And that's a terrible, terrible sin. Therefore a person has to be very, very careful. In all of his actions, that no one learn, particularly not our children. Our children should not learn how to be callous or make light of mitzvahs. Because if our children see like, meh, not a big deal. It's okay. God's not gonna get me for that. I've had many people make jokes of like,
you know, God really doesn't care. You think he cares if I do this and that on Shabbos? You think God cares if I do this or that on Shabbos? He doesn't really care. He's got more bigger things to worry about. And that's clearly a mistake. He says a person who transgresses sins that are punishable by divine severance of existence or by the judicial death penalties, repentance and the day of atonement will atone for half of it. The other half afflictions covers.
But if someone desecrates God's name, he says, it's very, very dangerous for one to desecrate God's name. Because let's say you can do teshuvah for it. But what about all those other people who now are following your lead and their mistakes are still on your account? Because they saw, oh, he was okay with it. He was fine with it. And now they will, they follow suit. Therefore, a person has to be so incredibly careful not to desecrate God's name.
The most important thing for a person to do is for a person to declare in public his mistakes that he did against God in desecrating his name. He has to say it in public. Don't learn from my mistakes. I transgressed. I offended. I desecrated God's name through my folly. And a person like this should repent every day till the day he dies because it's a very severe thing for a person to desecrate God's name. But there's something more to this.
And that is that a person needs to look at the positive of this as well. Look at the opposite of it. A person who's able to glorify God's name in public, that's the greatest thing in the world. You know, the people who were murdered brutally last week in Bondi Beach, do you know that every one of those are of the holiest people to ever live? Ever. You know why? Because they died on Kiddush Hashem. They died because they sanctified God's name.
What did they come for? They came to observe God's mitzvahs. They came to observe the laws that our Torah prescribes for us. The word of Hashem. There's nothing holier than that. I don't know who any of those people were. But I can tell you the same thing is true with every single Jew who has ever been killed because they were Jewish. They are of the holiest human beings ever to step foot on this planet. In fact, Rebbe Akiva.
Rebbe Akiva, when his body was being combed with steel iron combs, they were peeling his skin off. He was laughing. He was laughing. His students are like, what are you laughing? He says, my entire life I've been reciting the Shema, where we say, v'ahavtos Hashem l'kechu, you should love Hashem, your God. Chol, nafshecho, right? V'chol l'vavcho, with all your heart. V'chol ma'odecha, v'chol nafshecho, v'chol ma'odecha. With all of your hearts, hearts, your yetzertov, yetzera,
your good inclination, evil inclination. V'chol nafshecho, with your soul. What does it mean to give? He says, v'chol l'vavcho, with all of your hearts, I did. He says, v'chol ma'odecha, with all of your means, with all of your possessions, with all of your abilities, that I did. But with my soul, I've never done that. He says, I'm finally able to fulfill the mitzvah of loving Hashem with all of my soul. And I shouldn't smile. That was Rabbi Akiva.
Each one of these holy people are martyrs who have given their life for one purpose, like Rabbi Akiva, because I'm Jewish. They were targeted because they were Jewish. I know a woman whose child passed away from an illness. And she told me after one of these stories, one of these tragedies, she said to me, I'm jealous. I wish my son would have died, not from an illness, but from a sanctification of God's name. Something very, very powerful.
Okay, my dear friends, this concludes day number 172.
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